Home » Other » General » Oracle vs Sequel - question
Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642744] Thu, 17 September 2015 20:47 Go to next message
poconosms1
Messages: 4
Registered: September 2015
Location: New Jersey
Junior Member
Hi All,

I could use some help/advice. I am not a programmer, but am the project manager/owner of an application currently written in Oracle 9i using MS visual 2003, frame 1.x and .net. My company has all the licenses to take it to 12c ms visual2013, and frame 4.2. There's probably a million lines of code, and hundreds of stored procedures, views, and triggers. My development site is already 11g and it would take 3 months to upgrade production. I have 500 users and the data base is over 20 gigs with photo storage and retrieval. The application has FileNet storage.

My IT department is suggesting that I should have the database converted to Sequel 2015 and moved to a virtual environment. They are asking me for 300k to do this. I suspect it will cost closer to 700-900k because of all the proprietary rewrite required to go from Oracle to Sequel. The IT department would hire outside consultants to do the work, specifically since our in house shop lacks experience in Sequel. Currently our in house programmers update and program new modules.

To me it's a no brainer to keep it in oracle, since my company already has all the licenses. In addition, the in house programmers are not familiar with sequel database programming, so once the consultants leave I don't think i'll have the proper support. The IT group's line is there will be documentation to follow.
The current programmers and DBAs are unofficially warning me not to convert to sequel.


Thoughts?
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642747 is a reply to message #642744] Fri, 18 September 2015 02:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gazzag
Messages: 1118
Registered: November 2010
Location: Bedwas, UK
Senior Member
What is the relationship of the head of your IT department with these "consultants" who are going to cost you an alleged $300K? As you say, this figure is likely to balloon substantially during the project and I don't see what you stand to gain. As you say, you already have the licences in place to simply upgrade what you have. That, in itself, will be quite enough of an undertaking!
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642750 is a reply to message #642747] Fri, 18 September 2015 03:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cookiemonster
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Location: Rainy Manchester
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Sounds like madness.
If all the sql was written in the app layer swapping over would be relatively easy - though there would still be quite a bit of work needed in all likely hood. Even if everything worked out of the box you'd probably need to do changes for performance reasons due to differences in how oracle and sql sever work.
But since you've got all that code in the DB the amount of work involved is going to be huge. T-SQL and PL/SQL really aren't equivalent, they have fundamentally different approaches to a lot of things and you can't do a straight conversion from one to the other. In a lot cases you will need to work out what the PL/SQL is supposed to do and write the T-SQL from scratch based on the functional design without reference to the existing code.
Coupled with the fact that your people don't know sql-server and it's hard to see any upside, never mind sufficient upside to outweigh the negatives.
Also it's entirely possible to run oracle in virtual environments if you want, I've got some dev servers set up that way.

Seriously - what does the IT dept think the upside to this is?
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642751 is a reply to message #642750] Fri, 18 September 2015 03:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Michel Cadot
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In addition, the locking scheme and so transaction processing are different in both rbdms.

Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642752 is a reply to message #642751] Fri, 18 September 2015 03:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cookiemonster
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Location: Rainy Manchester
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And just to hammer that point home - it means that a bit of t-sql code and a bit of pl/sql that appear to be functionally equivalent can give different results if not designed by someone who really truly understands the differences in the locking scheme and transaction processing between the two.
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642753 is a reply to message #642750] Fri, 18 September 2015 03:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Littlefoot
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Last year, when I was on HrOUG conference, I attended a class about Equel (and won their T-shirt!). They migrate databases. Concretely, they mentioned MS SQL Server and Oracle. Maybe you'd be interested in what they offer and ask for a quote (as they do it inexpensively, whatever that means).
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642755 is a reply to message #642753] Fri, 18 September 2015 03:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gazzag
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Location: Bedwas, UK
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This very good article by Tom Kyte illustrates the point that Michel and cookiemonster are making regarding differences in RDBMS locking mechanisms.
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642756 is a reply to message #642753] Fri, 18 September 2015 03:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gazzag
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Fast, good, and cheap? Shocked
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642757 is a reply to message #642756] Fri, 18 September 2015 04:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Littlefoot
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That's what they said /forum/fa/3314/0/
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642758 is a reply to message #642757] Fri, 18 September 2015 04:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gazzag
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Interesting. They might be right...
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642760 is a reply to message #642758] Fri, 18 September 2015 05:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
poconosms1
Messages: 4
Registered: September 2015
Location: New Jersey
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Thanks, good stuff. I'll say I work for a government size of 60k employees. It's the asst. director that's pushing this. Indirectly I'm told he purchased a disaster recovery system and installed it in a building that did not enough power going into it to power the system. Never used and now obsolete, he's trying to trade it in to create a cloud. want's all sequel because it's cheaper, but needs me to convert in order to justify the trade. I'm told he's a real screw up, but that's government.
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642761 is a reply to message #642760] Fri, 18 September 2015 05:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gazzag
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Location: Bedwas, UK
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That's known as throwing good money after bad. As you say, this sort of thing happens in government agencies. I've seen it all too often Sad
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642776 is a reply to message #642760] Fri, 18 September 2015 14:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
poconosms1
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Registered: September 2015
Location: New Jersey
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just a quick additional information. There are over 400 tables and 5,000 fields
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642780 is a reply to message #642744] Sat, 19 September 2015 02:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
John Watson
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Registered: January 2010
Location: Global Village
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On the face of it, the move to SQL Server (whih I assume is what you mean by "Sequel"?) doesn't sound sensible. But on a second reading, perhaps it is. The database is tiny (only 20GB) and the application is not large (only 400 tables). Furthermore, you are using FileNet. FileNet is now an incredibly powerful ECM, is your FileNet release as old as your 9i DB? Dating back to before IBM bought it? If your application is just some sort of interface to FileNet, the conversion might be really simple if you take advantage of the current capabiities. Perhaps most of your code isn't really needed any more.
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642786 is a reply to message #642780] Sat, 19 September 2015 05:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
poconosms1
Messages: 4
Registered: September 2015
Location: New Jersey
Junior Member
My understanding is the FileNet is an older version and that version does not work well with Sql, so I guess that would have to be upgraded as well - although filenet is a minor feature of the application. I was told that there are still problems with Filenet and Sql, but I don't know what they are.

Another issue for me is photos. I have about 15,000 photos with another 5,000 expected.
Re: Oracle vs Sequel - question [message #642823 is a reply to message #642786] Mon, 21 September 2015 02:57 Go to previous message
cookiemonster
Messages: 13917
Registered: September 2008
Location: Rainy Manchester
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As far as I can see the size of the DB, number of tables and amount of data doesn't really matter. Creating copies of all the tables and shipping the data over is relatively simple.
The problem remains the amount of code to be converted, the fact that the oracle and sql server work differently at a fundamental level and the lack of sql server knowledge amongst your team.
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